This is a one-hour video of a great panel discussion at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The panelists are Wendy Lecker, Yohuru Willians, Jonathan Pelto, and Tom Scarice. You have read their writing on this blog.
It is a Sunday. Kick back and enjoy!
Andrea Gabor asks the million-dollar question: Why did Massachusetts, the most successful state in the nation on the National Assessment of Progress, drop its own finely honed standards and replace them with the untested Common Core standards? On one level, the answer is obvious: It wanted the money that come from Race to the Top. But at another level, this decision is not only puzzling but downright distressing. With the outstanding record of the students and teachers of Massachusetts, why in the world would policymakers take a chance on changing its successful system of standards and assessments? Of course, the $250 million that the state won is impressive, but no doubt the mandates that accompanied Race to the Top money very likely cost more than $250 million. From afar, it looks irresponsible. Even stranger is that the business community continues to complain about student performance when the performance of the public schools in Massachusetts is not only first in the nation but near the top of world rankings. What gives?
Is this just disruption for the sake of disruption?
Gabor writes:
Now the Massachusetts reforms are once again under assault by Common-Core enthusiasts. Strangely, many of those attacking the reforms are its erstwhile defenders. In February, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, a leading advocacy group for the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, issued the first of several reports that found, or are expected to find, the Bay State standards and an accompanying high-stakes test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System or MCAS, wanting when compared to the still-untested “Common-Core aligned” PARCC tests (PARCC stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.)
“The current MCAS high school tests do not identify students who are college- and career-ready, and they do not contain the right content to measure college- and career-readiness,” concludes the MBAE study.
By contrast, the MBAE cautiously endorses the PARCC test: “As we are preparing this report in early 2015, the PARCC tests hold the promise of being a good indicator of college- and career-readiness.” (Emphasis added.)
In response, researchers from the Pioneer Institute, a market-oriented Massachusetts think thank, argue that money, once again, is playing an outsized role in the latest anti-MCAS research. The turncoats, according to Pioneer, include MBAE, which was cofounded by the aforementioned Paul Reville, as well as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Achieve Inc., both national Common-Core advocates. What these organizations all have in common is that they have receive funding– lots of it—from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also invested over $200 million in developing the Common Core.
The most recent Massachusetts skirmish over the Common Core is no coincidence. This year, Massachusetts elementary and middle schools had the choice of taking the PARCC test or the MCAS. In the fall, Massachusetts will make a final decision about whether to ditch the MCAS entirely in favor of PARCC, at a time when half the states that initially agreed to adopt the Common-Core aligned test have since backed out.
In their OpEd, Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass, detail the tangled web of relationships that tie the critics of the Massachusetts reforms to the Gates foundation, the PARCC tests and the Common Core. The OpEd is particularly scathing about the role of the MBAE:
“The Mass. Business Alliance study’s credibility was further compromised by the fact that its author is an adviser to PARCC. An earlier report from the Alliance — written by the senior education adviser to the giant testing company Pearson, which is near the top of a long list of entities that stand to gain from the switch to Common Core — was so bereft of intellectual integrity that it lifted an entire purported “case study” from The Boston Globe without attribution.”
However, the winner of the “conflict-of-interest derby,” according to Chieppo and Gass, is Teach Plus, a Boston-based national education-reform organization, which published a pro-PARCC report, “Massachusetts Teachers Examine PARCC“, in March:
The group recently released a study in which 23 of its fellows conclude that the commonwealth should ditch MCAS for PARCC. Teach Plus has received over $17 million from the Gates Foundation, including stipends for each of those 23 fellows.
The question now is whether Massachusetts will stick with its own test, MCAS, or whether it will switch to PARCC.
After each administration of MCAS, the questions and answers are released for public review. This is not the case with PARCC.
PARCC, by contrast, is a locked box, entirely controlled by Pearson, the testing giant that is developing the PARCC tests. It isn’t designed to be improved by educators over time, nor to help educators use the test to improve what or how they teach.
For now, at least in Massachusetts, the war over the Common Core will continue for at least a few months. Fordham Institute is expected to produce a study this summer examining the MCAS’s alignment to the Common Core; if its earlier support for the PARCC test is any indication, it too is likely to find against MCAS.
In Massachusetts, a final decision will be made by Mitchell Chester, the current education commissioner. Chester, it must be noted, also chairs PARCC’s governing board.
There you have it, folks. Conflicts of interest abound. Lots of money riding on the decision. And the person who will make the final decision as to which test will be used just happens to be the chair of the PARCC governing board. What do you think will happen?
A reader left this comment:
Insofar as the PARCC exam is concerned, as a reader, I’ve found the following to be true:
1. Many of the passages are insanely difficult, and most students are not psychologically mature enough to handle them, nor do they have enough background information to handle the passages and tasks.
2. Many from PARCC and Pearson HATE glossing. Trust me, I argued about several passages with them, and they refused to do so. I think it depends on the team you get, though. Other people at various meetings said they glossed a bit more than my team was allowed.
3. The test is bloody difficult, and there are a few answers choices for many of the passages that could be justified; however, according to Pearson, they were not the “best” answers… Whatever that means.
Insanity, power, and money are in cahoots to destroy public education.
Yes, you read that right. The vendor of the Smarter Balanced Assessment was not prepared for the number of tests that the server had to deliver, and the system broke down in three states.
According to the Nevada Department of Education, a spike in students taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC) this morning in Nevada, Montana and North Dakota exceeded the data capacity of Measured Progress, a third-party vendor contracted by the states to provide the test.
All testing in the three states has been stopped until Measured Progress can increase its data capacity, according to an email sent to state superintendents today by state deputy superintendent Steve Canavero.
Students who were taking the test at the time of the problem were able to finish their test, but teachers could not start new tests. About 13,000 tests were completed this morning before the errors started occurring, according to the department.
Think about it. The vendor didn’t know that so many students would be taking tests at the same time. What were they thinking?
Nothing to add to the headline. Send me links if you find them.
Mercedes Schneider has been reading the Senate bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind). She has been reading it line by line. This is the fourth of five installments.
Mercedes finds that the statutory language is extremely supportive of “public” charter schools, which are public when they want the money but not “public” when it is time for an audit or accountability. The bill makes a few suggestions of reform, but none is strong enough to rein in the scandals that clutter the charter industry. If anything, the embrace of privately managed charters by Democrats shows the party’s abandonment of public education. We expect Republicans to advocate for school choice, but now Democrats are on the same side.
This arrived in my email box today. The author, who owns a literacy company, asked to remain anonymous. He is describing an entrepreneurs’ conclave at Arizona State University, cosponsored by GSV Capital, whose leader, Michael Moe, has been bullish about the education sector as a profit opportunity for many years.
My correspondent writes:
Dear Dr. Ravitch,
I’m a longtime fan of your work and your blog (which I have recommended to many colleagues and in my company’s blog).
My name is ……
I’m writing to you today to tell you about a conference I just returned from called the ASU GSV Summit. It should really be called the Taxpayer Funded Education Business Con-ference (with an emphasis on “con”), because it was filled with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists claiming to want to do “social capitalism” but who actually were participating in an event filled with corporate dominated “school reform” propaganda that placed its focus on charters, accountability (ie testing), and corporate solutions such as Teach For America. While a great deal of lip service was paid to the great work of teachers (including an appearance by the hip-hop star, Common, along with his mother, a Chicago school board member), far more attention was given to pro-corporate propaganda. For instance, one of the hosts, GSV’s Michael Moe (http://investors.gsvcap.com/management.cfm) gave a lengthy keynote in which he compared education reformers to former Notre Dame coach, Lou Holtz and then extolled the virtues of companies such as Dreambox Learning, an online math program, that owes its existence to the fact that its owners also own a chain of charter schools that purchase its software. Not coincidentally, Dreambox won their ROE (Return on Education) award for the 3rd year in a row.
I think Dreambox is well worth a look because it exemplifies the kind of corporate reform darling that has success based completely on smoke and mirrors. If you read this report: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.epi.org/files/2014/school-privatization-milwaukee.pdf, it outlines Dreambox’s relationship with the Rocketship Charter Schools. It also details how: “When the U.S. Department of Education reviewed DreamBox in December 2013, researchers found 11 studies claiming to assess the program’s impact, but immediately rejected 10 of them as statistically meaningless. While the 11th study used sound methods and reported “significant gains in overall mathematics scores,” DOE staff found that the authors—whose work was commissioned by Rocketship—had arbitrarily excluded students they deemed “outliers.” When DOE staff reran the study with all students included, they concluded that DreamBox has “no discernible effects on mathematics achievement for elementary school students.” Following publication of the DOE’s report, the Rocketship-commissioned authors produced additional data that convinced federal researchers to upgrade their assessment of DreamBox’s impacts to “potentially positive effects” based on “small evidence.” (You can see the DOE report here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/intervention_reports/wwc_dreambox_121013.pdf.)
I can’t keep track of how many awards Dreambox has won – all based completely on fraudulent studies and fraudulent marketing claims (e.g., “analyzes over 48,000 data points per student, per hour” – how on earth could any elementary school math program have over 48,000 data points in one hour? They used to say that they had “millions” of data points, so I guess 48,000 is their way of being conservative).
Another particularly odious presentation was made by billionaire Vinod Khosla who regaled the audience with his fact-free, research-ridiculing view that “We spend too much on education – if we cut education funding in half we would get a better result.” He also told us how “tenure” is a dated concept, and he lamented how teachers using Teacher Created Materials charge around $5 for their lesson plans, because “they should be free” and produced “from passion and not a desire for profit.” This from a man worth $1.7 billion! Apparently, the only people who should make a decent living in the education field are VCs like himself and the tech companies he chooses to fund.
I could go on, but you get the point. I’ve been to many, many education conferences that promote entrepreneurialism and technology solutions (SIIA, ISTE, NSBA, FETC, etc.). This one was the most overtly pro-corporate I have ever seen.
Peter Greene reports on another test-scoring company looking for test scorers.
Measurement Incorporated boasts ten scoring centers, which is a good thing because “to guarantee test security, all work has to be done at one of our Scoring Centers in Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Kansas and Washington or from a secure work station in your home.”
The ad, which went up ten days ago, is part of a recruiting drive for the test-correction high season of March and April. “These projects may include scoring test items in reading, math, science, social studies, or written essays. The tests come from many different states representing students at all grade levels.”
The job starts at $11.20. After logging 450 hours, workers are eligible to bump up to $11.95. Day and night shifts are available, and workers are expected to put in five days a week.
Peter Greene’s summary:
I expect we’ll continue to see many of these smaller companies scarfing up sub-contracts for the Big Guys and handling the business of hiring part-timers to help make decisions about the fate of America’s children, teachers, and schools. Only one of two things can be true here– either the system is so simplified and so user-proof that it doesn’t really matter who’s doing the scoring work (in which case it’s a dopey system that gives back very little information and is easy to game) or it does matter who’s doing the scoring (in which case, the use of part-time temps who are available only because they couldn’t find a real job is not exactly comforting). Either way, this is one more big fat reminder that the Big Standardized Test is a dumb way to assess any part of America’s education system.
Yet another reason to opt out of this system.
Peter Greene read an opinion piece defending Common Core in a major newspaper in Arizona. With a bit of googling, he discovered that the writer–Rebecca Hipps– lives in Washington, D.C., and works for an organization that sells Common Core teaching materials. What surprised him even more was that with the author’s concern for the state of public education, she said nothing about the punishing budget cuts that have decimated its schools (as well as higher education, which Governor Doug Ducey seems to want to get rid of along with public schools). Greene calls his post “Razing Arizona,” which is a clever pun on the name of a popular movie called “Raising Arizona,” by the Coen brothers.
He writes:
Arizona has cut public ed spending steadily since the late oughts, and they rank 50th in college per-student spending. It’s a wonder that Hipps did not bring this up, as it would seem that Arizona is a poster child for spending bottom dollar on education and getting bottom dollar results.
Greene points out that legislators are responding to public criticism by making it illegal for educators to engage in public discussion or debates:
At least Hipps is able to speak out at all. Arizona’s teachers, superintendents, principals and school board members have spoke up about the slash and burn methods of their state leaders, and the state leader response has been to float a law that will require them to shut up.
Arizona lawmakers have attached an amendment to Senate Bill 1172. It prohibits “an employee of a school district or charter school, acting on the district’s or charter school’s behalf, from distributing electronic materials to influence the outcome of an election or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation.”
On the one hand, it’s a good idea that Mrs. O’Teacher not give her class an hour of self-directed worksheets while she stuffs envelopes for the new ballot initiative. On the other hand, there’s that whole First Amendment thing. And the law is so broadly worded that I imagine a citizen asking a school district employee, “I’m really worried about the new proposed law cutting all money to public schools. Will that hurt our programs here,” and said school employee must reply, by law, “I cannot share any information about that with you.” Other critics of the bill fear that it would even prohibit any discussion of educational programs that directly affect children with those children’s parents.
And while I’m not concerned, exactly, I am curious– would this law also prohibit charter schools from advertising?
The law is clearly one more attempt to push educators out of the political world. No more informational letters to parents and voters. No more taking a public stand against assaults on school funding by the governor and legislators. Presumably no teacher or administrator in Arizona could write a response to Hipps’ op-ed– at least not with any indication that they were writing their response from the perspective of a public educator.
In their wisdom, legislators have decided that the biggest problem of public schools is not the lack of funding, but the surplus of discussion of their funding. Best to shut up the educators.
Read this article in the Boston Globe and ask yourself: “What’s the point of a college degree?”
The article assumes that one gets a degree to get a better job and make more money. It describes a program that is cheap and enables low-income students to get a degree, in large extent through online learning.
A couple of liberal arts professors complain that this bargain basement approach is not really a college education. Because they are poor, the students have no exposure to real education.
““The whole premise of College for America is bargain education,” says Amy Slaton, a Drexel University history professor who has been a vocal critic of the model. “Instead of saying, ‘We’re going to help everyone reach the best of the best,’ we’re saying, ‘Here’s the generic, no-frills version for you.’ It pegs the value of the education to what you’re able to pay, instead of helping everyone to achieve the richest, most varied education they can. Why aren’t we asking about how we can bring more classroom time, more expert teaching to everyone?”
Or another question:
Why aren’t we bringing down the cost of higher education with greater student aid? Why trick poor and minority students with a cheap substitute for a real college education? If having a degree matters most, just give out a generic degree that means nothing except you can say you have one. That’s cheaper still. There are so many fake universities these days, who will know the difference?
If we really cared about students and education, higher education would be free, at least in the public sector.
